Question

Can someone explain Chemistry Orbitals to me?

Answer 1

Definition of orbitals:
An energy state in the atomic model which describes where an electron will likely be.

Type of Orbital: types:
1) s(2 electrons)
2) p(6 electrons)
3) d(10 electrons)
4) f(14 electrons)

Energy level does not dictate the type of orbital, each successive energy level has a greater number of orbitals and therefore electrons.

Answer 2

Is there a reason for the amount of electrons in the orbital?

Answer 3

the reason is types of orbitals if it is s then 2 electrons and so on

Answer 4

Or
The simple answer is a shell can contain 2n^2 electrons where n = the shell number. A subshell can contain up to 4l + 2 electrons.

Shell = maximum electron capacity
s = 2(1)^2 = 2
p = 2(2)^2 = 8
d = 2(3)^2 = 18

Answer 5

An S orbital is like a spherical orbital and a P orbital is like a double balloon orbital

Answer 6

There is a reason. The reason is that 1 the schrodinger's wave equation predicts it and 2 it fits experimental data. i will use a semi-classical way to describe it here.

Pauli's exclusion principle says that no electron in an atom can have the same values for (n,1,m,s).

n is probably more familiar to you. it's the electron shell it is in.
So Helium has n=1 shell, neon has n=2 shells.

the next is the azimuthal quantum number, or l. This is reflected as s,p,d,f(?).
So values of l=0 correspond to the s orbital
and values of l=1 correspond to the p oribital
and values of l=2 correspond to the d orbital.
loosely speaking, l is a value of how the electron is orbiting around the nucleus.
and because it is QUANTUM physics the electrons cannot just orbit any how they like. they can rotate without tilt or with certain levels of tilting (see diagram):

with larger values of l, there can be more combinations of this tilt, and thus more orbitals. max l = n-1 and min 1 is 0.

it is an experiemental fact that a moving charge creates a magnetic field. so it shouldn't surprise you that an orbiting electron creates a magnetic field. of course, what this field is like depends on how the electron orbits. the number we denote it as m.
this m values gives rise to the number appearing after for the s in 2s1. The number 1 correspond to the m number. m has a value range of +- l , because like i said it depends on how it is orbiting the atom (denoted by l). minus means it's spinning in another direction.


s represents the electron spin. spin up spin down. i have no idea how this electron spins so i will not elaborate further. but it is due to the fact that electrons seem to have an intrinsic magnetic field even if they are not orbiting. it was initially called spin because it was thought that the electron was spinning on it;s axis, but it isn't the case. this allows the above example of 2s1 to have a max of 2s2.

I know this sucks as an explanation but i will try a final example to try to put everything in order. lets say I have n=3, which has l=n-1 = 3-1=2. That means it has 3 values for l: 0,1,2.

l=0 is s orbital
l=1 is p orbital
l=2 is d orbital.

now to the magnetic component m. m takes values of +- l. so I expect:
l=0, s orbital
m=0

l=1, p orbital
m=-1
m=0
m=1

l=2, d orbital
m=+2
m=+1
m=0
m=-1
m=-2

and finally the spin component s, which says the electron can either spin upwards or downwards. so just multiple the above by 2 to get the number of permitted electrons in each orbital subshell shell. I forgot the terms.